Abdullah Hakim Quick – New Muslim Corner – Early Life of Prophet Muhammad
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Our praise are due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon
our beloved prophet Muhammad, the master of the
first and the last, and his family, his
companions, and all those who call to his
way and establish his sunnah to the day
of judgment.
As Stuart follows, Assalamu alaikum,
this
is a continuation,
of our new Muslim corner.
And the idea is to have a place
where
those who have recently embraced Islam,
and those who are interested in Islam,
can ask questions and
feel safe and comfortable,
to question things, you know, to understand more
about the foundations,
of Islam, because in entering Islam, we find
that this is over 2,000,000,000 people and there
are so many cultures and so many individuals.
Sometimes it gets a little complicated and confusing.
So we want to make it easy and
go back to the foundations,
so that we have, a good base
as to what Islam is,
and that can separate,
Islam from culture
because the cultures of people may vary or
do vary,
from place to place,
from language to language, and group to group.
And so we we had looked at,
the focus as the foundation is the Kalima,
La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasoolullah,
and that is that there's no god but
Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.
And so we looked at, for the first
few months, the first part of the kalima,
understanding that the oneness of Allah,
is,
not as
simple,
as it seems.
We need to even understand the oneness of
Allah. And we are talking about the creator
who has no equals and no rivals and
no partners
and is not like any created thing.
And the second part is Muhammad or Surah.
That is the part for most people,
who are entering Islam or who are questioning
about Islam is a little more difficult,
to grasp.
Because unless you are were familiar with Muslims
or unless you study history,
you may not
have,
an understanding who prophet Mohammed ibn Abdullah,
peace be upon him, is.
And but once you do,
then it becomes very easy,
to accept
the second part of the kalimah.
And that is that we accept
prophet Muhammad
as the seal of the messengers.
So we're not talking about the first messenger,
because we believe that the first messenger was,
prophet Adam alaihi salam,
right, the first human being.
And as as as our prophet has told
us,
over a 124,000
prophets and messengers
came to every nation and every tribe,
everywhere.
Somebody came
teaching about the belief in,
one god. Prophets came to China.
Prophets came to India,
to Africa, to Europe, to the Americas.
Every nation according to the Quran,
book of scriptures
for the Muslims.
Every nation and every tribe,
has this understanding.
And as I had mentioned before on a
journey that I took into the Amazon,
region,
with a group called Arawak.
And the Arawaks,
one of the foundational groups,
in the indigenous,
peoples of the Caribbean region.
And
in speaking to an Arawak chief,
and I explained to him about the concept
of the great spirit
of the creator. And he said, oh, we
have this,
and the name is Adayeli
Adayeli.
So within Arawak language,
how he described
it is basically our understanding of the creator.
So therefore,
for people who lived in the Amazon region,
who did not come in contact
with the teachings of any of the major
prophets of the world,
any of the cultures,
and that person believed in one god,
tried to live a good life, then we
would consider that person to be Muslim.
Because Muslim means
one who submits
to the will of Allah.
And I searched different parts of the world
to try to understand this. I was on
a radio program,
in Glasgow, in Scotland.
And, the Scottish Muslim brother who was with
me on the program, he said that they
had evidence of an individual who came before
the time
of prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, into
the,
isles there,
you know, in the north,
in Scotland and up in the north, and
he was teaching the belief in one god.
So that had existed amongst them.
So everywhere, you'll find this in all the
different cultures.
But the difference is we are taught that
this prophet, Mohammed, is the seal
and the finality of the prophets.
He is not the first.
So with that in mind
and an understanding of monotheism
and monotheistic
teachings,
morality, and lifestyle,
then we can begin to,
try to understand this, the prophet's
life,
and it would make it easier
and more explainable,
why we are accepting the second part of
the kalimah,
which is Muhammad or Rasulullah,
Because a person should accept it, not just
because they trust the person who's telling them.
You know, some people accept Islam
because they wanna get married,
and they're in love.
Okay. You can be in love.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's life.
But being in love is not the reason
why you should be changing
your whole spiritual belief.
Love
can serve as a way you're stimulated toward
it.
That person helped you. That person brought you
toward it.
But that person is not the one
who should be the deciding factor on whether
you're accepting Islam.
Because there's too many cases
of people who accept Islam
out of
their love for an individual,
or they trusted him or her,
and they become Muslim,
and then their partner
starts shaking and changing.
Maybe they're only a cultural Muslim.
So if you accepted Islam based on him,
you have a problem.
If you accepted it based on your connection
with Allah,
your connection with prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, then whether your partner, male or female,
leaves Islam, male or forbid or if he
gets shaky, not gonna bother
you because you're in.
Okay? So this is the our purpose now
in trying to make it clear,
with,
the second part of the kaliwa,
Muhammad Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Because this is a man that we should
know,
And educated people
around the world,
and I've seen it in traveling to different
places and speaking with educated people,
Many of them
do not know who he is.
Only the people or usually only the people
who take
Middle Eastern studies
or religious studies. They have may have more
of an understanding, but generally, highly educated people
do not know.
But yet and still this individual now,
who as we found out, is born in
5 70 AD.
So just think about this date,
5/70.
And
he
begins this message.
It spreads, and we'll be talking more about
it.
It starts to spread
within 100 years.
It reaches
China
on one side.
It goes North into the Caucasoid mountains,
but is now Chechnya and Dagestan.
It goes deep south into Swahili coast.
It goes all the way to the Atlantic
in 100 years.
And there's no mass communication.
There's no armies. They did not have a
huge army
where they're conquering people and forcing them to
accept Islam.
Didn't exist.
And it continues to spread.
Even though over the centuries, it fell under
attack,
you know, by crusaders and by all tech
it still spreads. And now
even in this part of the 21st century,
it's still spreading.
And Muslims are over 2,000,000,000
people now in the world.
So how is this individual
who's speaking Arabic, does not speak other languages,
has not studied the Bible,
has not studied the Torah,
has not studied other religions,
but his teachings are continuing to spread.
This is
actually this is miraculous,
or at least
it's something that people should be concerned about.
What is it that he's teaching? Who is
this person?
Okay. So we want to, in a
relaxed general way,
look at his life
so we can begin to understand.
And this is not to go into too
many details. We have a course,
here that was taught and it's online for
those who want to go deeper into it
called Fit Koseera,
and that is understanding the life of a
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that goes
deeper into some of the complexities.
But this is least to get us familiar
with this individual.
And we understood
that
he is a descendant,
a direct descendant coming from
prophet Ibrahim Alaihi Salam. We looked at that
last week
That Ibrahim
had 2 wives. He had Sarah,
who he came with from Tigris, Euphrates region.
Okay. They were not,
Jewish. They were not
Arabs.
They came from Mesopotamia.
That's now Iraq. It wasn't Iraq called Iraq
in those days, but they came from there.
He's a strong believer in one god.
He goes into Egypt,
and the rulers at that time who were
from also from Iraq, they had conquered Egypt,
which is Africa.
And they liked him, and they gave him
a servant who some say was a princess
named Hajar,
or they would say Hagar in English.
And,
when Sarah could not have children,
she said to Abraham and this is in
Genesis. We studied it last week. It's in
Genesis.
Not in the Quran. It's in the Bible.
That she said to Abraham,
take Hajar, Hagar, as a wife.
It's in the Bible. Wife,
not concubine slave servant.
Take her as a wife.
And according to Genesis as well,
she conceived
a child, Ishmael or Ishmael alaihi salaam.
So that's two sides of the family.
So one side is with, Hagar,
Hajar, and Ishmael.
The other side is Sarah.
And later on, Sarah did have children.
She had Isaac,
Ishaq.
From Isaac came Jacob
or Yaqub.
Right? And from Yaqub,
his,
he was called Israel.
That's where the name Israel comes from.
Really means the prophet Jacob.
He had 12 sons that makes up the
12 tribes of Israel.
So one of those tribes
or amongst those tribes, this is where Moses
comes from and Jesus.
That's the present day, what you call Jewish
people.
Right? On the side of Isaac.
And so there is Moses,
and there is,
Jesus,
and it comes down.
That side's well known
to the western world. But other side,
Hajar,
remember she was his wife. She had a
son,
and they went to a desolate valley called
Becca.
Abraham was was was commanded by god to
go to Becca,
and he goes to Becca.
And they build a house of worship called
the Kaaba.
And the name Becca later becomes pronounced Mecca.
Right? And so that becomes
the 1st dedicated house of worship
built on the structure of prophet, Adam,
peace be upon him, upon his place. K?
So it's built on that structure.
So if you look at that chart again,
again, we need to know this man. Right?
That's the question. Who is Mohammed?
Because if you go to average person on
the street, who is Mohammed?
They don't know.
Some people might say, well, Mohammed, I mean,
is he a terrorist?
Like, who is this guy?
Because they're just hearing things.
But who is it? Look at the chart
again.
The grandfather Abraham, that means Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed are cousins.
If you do a DNA study,
you will see
a link in their DNA. They're from the
same family.
K. So those who wanna know who he
is,
if you're coming from a, a a Christian
or Jewish background,
that will put him physically
right inside of your teachings.
K? Because he's part of the lineage.
Secondly, if you study what he taught, you
will see it's the same message as, these
prophets as well.
So it's right inside
what they call Judeo
Christian
theology.
Judeo
Christian.
It's right in the middle of it.
So looking at his lineage,
and not to go into too much details,
but this was, you know, the the physical
lineage, we actually are able to trace his
lineage
and to trace his parents.
Because the Arabs at the time, they were
very much into the lineage thing they memorized,
you know, the names.
It was very important to them in their
society, and his name is Mohammed ibn Abdullah
ibn Abdul Muttalib.
Right? Ibn means son of.
Okay? So the son of Abdulmutallib,
the son of Hashim.
Hashem is a very important name.
K? Hashem is used up until today.
You know that the Jordan if you got
a Jordanian passport,
it says the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
It's on the passport
because the leaders of Jordan claimed to be
descendants,
you know, of the prophet. The king of
Morocco
is Hashemi.
He's also Hashemite.
Amongst the Iranian,
Shia,
if you see the Shia mullahs who have
black turbanon,
they also claim to be Hashimi.
So this is a very important,
person here,
and we'll look at him and the role
he plays. He's a son of Abdulmanaf, the
son of Pusey,
the son of,
Khilab, the son of Murrah,
the son of Kaab, the son of Lu'e,
the son of Gahlav,
the son of ibn
ibn Fihah.
Now Fihr,
his nickname was Quresh.
Quresh.
Okay?
That's the noble tribe of Quresh, and it's
all around the place.
I was getting on the 401,
and I put on my 608,
you know, news. Right? You wanna get to
you know, you wanna find the traffic. Right?
And so the news bulletin comes in and
this person comes on. You probably heard him
before. His name is Mu'tman Qureshi.
He's a well known radio personality.
Mu'tman
Qureshi.
That's his name.
The average person will say, okay, Mu'min Qureshi.
What does that mean? Mu'min means a believer,
and Qureshi is supposed to mean he's a
descendant of Qureshi.
That's the person who's on
the 680
680 news. Right?
So this is the quotation. We'll find out
about this group as well. Ibn Malik, ibn
Nadar, ibn Kinana, ibn Hosema, ibn Mududika,
ibn Elias, ibn Mudah, ibn Nizah, ibn Ma'ad,
ibn Adnan.
So that is the clearest part,
of the lineage,
and the rest of all the scholars agree
that Adnan is connected directly to Ismail.
Okay? So that that's that's your your your
connection
in terms of his lineage.
So without going into details, remember the names
that were there of the different,
people here from Quresh.
So the Quresh group
were considered to be
the noble people of Mecca.
So they were the rulers of Mecca, and
Mecca was the capital city, the premier city
on the Arabian Peninsula. It's in the middle
of the trade routes,
and,
it's got water and everything, so it's a
key place.
And the Quresh controlled this area.
And so without going into the details, there
was a struggle like human beings always have
their political struggles.
So there's a struggle between, you know, some
of the factions within Quresh,
but the people loved Hashem.
Remember that name, Hashim?
They loved him because his part of the
family
was
their job was to take care of Zamzam
water
and also to distribute food
to the pilgrims and the people who come
in to Mecca.
And that's crucial because Mecca does not grow,
agriculture.
Some date palms, a few of them.
So therefore, you have to go with merchants
who are giving you your food.
You know, it's it's it's not easy, you
know, so he's in charge of that. So
people naturally,
you're gonna love the person who's feeding you
and and giving you water in the desert.
And he he had this personality,
you know, about him.
Another section of the Quresh called the AbduDar,
they were in charge of the politics,
of,
Mecca.
And another group called the Benu Umayyah,
they were involved in the politics and the
power as well.
And so a struggle,
came between the Bennu Hashim and the Bennu
Umayyad.
K? This is something for those who wanna
go into the details
of the history.
K? The important thing, however,
is that
as we learned,
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he was
born
on the year of the elephants.
That was 5 70 AD.
And we found out that was the year
that Ethiopians,
you know, had attacked,
Mecca from the south with that huge army.
K? Now his father,
prophet Muhammad,
his father's name was Abdullah.
Remember your family tree. Right? So Abdullah.
And he married a woman named Aminah bint
Wahab
bint Abdaminaf.
So she was from Quraish too.
Both of them are from this noble lineage.
You know what's interesting about Quraish?
Because people think about Arabs. Like, what is
an Arab? Right? And we talked about that
last week. An Arab is not a racial
group.
It is a mixed group,
and that's part of the reason why you
can see that they may have you know,
Arabs might have been chosen,
as the one to carry this message because
it's not only for Arabs.
Because Ibrahim, the father Abraham, grandfather,
was from Iraq,
Tigris Euphrates.
So that's where Mesopotamia,
Babylon, Chaldea.
And then,
the mother, Hadjha,
was an African.
She was from Egypt. At that time in
Egypt,
no foreign nations
had conquered,
the kingdoms where they built the pyramids.
It was only this Hyksos group that Ibrahim
met. Before that,
there's no foreign nations. So the original Egyptians
who built the pyramid were dark skinned African
people,
and that's been proven.
So this is an African person.
Okay. So now you have somebody who's mixed
between Iraqi blood
and African blood, and then that's Ishmael.
And his wife is coming from the Arabs
of the south,
Right? The Jodhom.
So that's pure Arab blood.
So it's a mixture of these
power sources,
Nile Valley,
Tigris, Euphrates Valley,
Southern Arabia.
You see it? These are influential
places. It makes
up the Quresh. It's a mixed group,
physically,
for those who are into this. And, unfortunately,
a lot of people today are into this
racial, you know, type of tribal thing.
That's why we have to know who this
person is.
So he was born.
His his his mother's name was Amina,
and his father remember Hashem?
Hashem had set up if I put it
here. No. Hashem
went north,
and
he started trade
on the coast, the Mediterranean coast,
in a very famous city
where the Greeks and the Romans would meet
the Arabs.
You know what that city is called?
I mentioned it last week if anybody can
remember.
You know what city that was?
Where Hashem went to?
Gaza.
See Gaza today with Palestine?
And they're trying to say, well, these people
don't have any heritage. They have nothing. Right?
It was Gaza.
That was the base
where the trade was happening. So it was
an important city
where all the Mediterranean people would meet. The
Arabs were coming with frankincense and myrrh and
later on with coffee and spices
and fragrances and all these things is a
key city
on the coast.
That's what Gaza actually is.
And that's why Muslims will not let this
city die
no matter what the occupiers are doing.
Because other people have destroyed it in the
past. The Mongols destroyed it. Crusaders destroyed it,
but it came back.
And inshallah, it will it will come back.
So
Hashem set up trade there,
and that trade went south,
and north. Winter trade,
summer trade.
Okay? That's up and down the coast.
Hashem was the one who set that up.
And on one of the journeys
up to Gaza,
Hashem passed away.
So Hashem
is buried in Gaza.
That's another reason why it's an important city.
Right?
And the sort of trade is is there
up to the north.
K? Now the father
of prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as
the mother was
just about to have the child
or right around the time of the child,
he goes north
to Gaza.
He's he's gonna go up there, the trade
routes. Right?
He's going up there,
and he gets sick
with a fever or or virus or whatever
it is, and he dies
in the city called Yathrib
that is later called Medina. So in the
Yathrib area Yathrib area,
Abdullah
passes away.
But he was sent up to Syria and
up into this area there.
But that's where he ended up dying.
Okay?
So now the mother is left,
there.
She's left,
without,
you know, she she doesn't have her husband
there.
And but she's still part of that family.
And so Abdul Muttalib,
you know, they they they they they take
care
of Abdullah's,
family.
Okay? So she's still,
okay because she's got a family in back
of her.
And,
she goes north
to visit the grave of her husband.
He's he's buried, you know, there in.
And on the journey,
she she gets sick on the journey.
And at a place called Abwa,
which is in between Mecca and Medina, she
dies.
K? That's the prophet Muhammad's that's his mother,
his father,
and now that's his mother.
And at as she was on her
deathbed,
They're in the desert, in a caravan, like,
Abba was a a place where you could
stop.
She says to the dry nurse, not wet
nurse, it's the dry nurse
who was taking care of
their child, whose whose name was Eamon,
or Barakah, she was
Ethiopian.
Actually, you could say East African. She was
an East African woman.
And she says to Amen,
be a mother
to my child.
You are now his mother.
Not sir not a servant woman.
He says, be his mother.
So from that time,
for most of his life
until she passed away,
Eamon,
he treated her like his mother.
And that's an Ethiopian
African. It's really an East African woman,
is his mother.
So think about tribalism and racism and all
that. Right?
All that will break down once you know
who this person is
and what he actually means.
Okay?
So,
this is what happened later on,
but let me take a step back a
little bit.
Okay. So Abdullah dies
in the north,
and the mother is there in Mecca,
and she has the child. Umida is alive.
I wanna take a step back, and and
she has the young baby,
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Now the Quraish in Mecca,
it was the habit of the Quraish
to send their children outside the city
in order to,
be able to
breathe fresh air
and to learn Arabic
and to live a good hearty life.
This this was their habit, because Mecca was
more crowded.
And the people of the desert,
they spoke pure Arabic language.
Pure Arabic.
Also,
the the water was fresher,
and so they they would actually literally make
an agreement with a tribe,
and they would send the child out
to the surrounding areas
and for the first few years of the
life.
And so,
a woman by the name of Halima
bint Abi Duaib,
of Sa of the Ben Usad.
So she came into Mecca,
and she, they made an agreement that she
would take the boy,
Muhammad, peace be upon him.
And this is how it was set up
in Mecca at the time. Amina, again, we
took a step back. She's still alive.
Okay? And the sun is now with
the clients
in the desert.
What does that do?
This is like today. You see for many
of us
today, upper class people
who can afford it.
Their children
don't stay in the city,
on video games,
drinking Coca Cola and eating McDonald's.
Right? People who have wealth, their children go
to camps.
Their children go out into,
and learn skills and drink fresh water,
and they will learn their dead languages.
Right? So people who don't have access to
this.
Okay? So the life in the desert actually
will make you stronger
When you're living out in the desert, it's
like somebody who's living in,
the the the the
wooded wooden woodland area of Ontario.
K?
It's freeze free. It's open air,
outdoor living.
So it's building up, you know, your strength.
Okay? And the nourishment of the animals that
are there and whatnot, it was considered
by the Arabs in Mecca to be better
than the crowded area of Mecca itself.
So this was a very important move.
And, also,
the people of the desert
spoke classical Arabic language.
It was not mixed like the traders in
the city,
because you gotta do business with other nations,
so you'll pick up,
other languages and we'll mix. You won't be
the same. But these were pure Arabic speaking
people,
And that was important for the Arabs because
the strongest thing that Arabs had at the
time was their language.
And later on, you'll see how important this
is because the Quran itself, the last revelation,
came in Arabic.
Now what is it about the Arabic language?
And why would Allah choose this language
to be the language of a revelation supposed
to be for all people all around the
world?
Arabic language,
for
linguists, when they look at languages, Arabic is
they pronounce
they use every part of their throat and
mouth to pronounce words.
They use the front of their mouth.
They use the top of their, mouth. They
use their throat.
English,
our language,
is a very narrow language.
Even if you wanna learn French, you gotta
start to learn how to pronounce French words.
Right? You also wanna learn French.
If you gotta learn German or other languages,
you gotta start to learn
Arabic
is one of the most complicated
but straightforward languages in the world.
Because when an Arab speaks,
they they speak to male,
it changes the verb. Female
changes the verb.
2
people changes the verb.
2 females
changes the verb. 2 males changes the verb.
A group of people changes the verb.
So you have to be able to
do all of these things.
There's so many complications in Arabic.
It is a poetic language. It's a language
of poets.
So you can see why
when the when the Quran came
in Arabic,
it was so powerful
that people would listen to it,
and they would accept Islam.
How is that possible? Because they knew their
language.
And, normally,
languages Arabic had poetry
that had certain
rhythms,
and it had prose,
which is telling a story,
but the Quran
came in rhymed
prose.
So it's like telling a story
in perfect rhythm,
which Arabs could not do. And up until
now, nobody's been able to do this in
the Arabic language.
That's part of the miracle of this
of the of the Quran itself, which came
through the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
So if he was a poet,
right, it's not poetry.
Nobody ever spoke like this before.
So in order to be able to appreciate
the message,
that's why it was important to learn classical
Arabic.
K?
Also,
in the desert, they had,
good character.
Because when you,
when you live in the desert,
there's certain types of things that you have
to have to survive.
One thing you need in the desert to
survive is karam, generosity.
Because if somebody comes along
in the desert
and they visit you,
you have to take care of that person
or they're gonna die.
So when when you visit somebody's home
amongst the Arabs,
the first thing that they would offer is
water
because you're in the middle of the desert.
And then they would offer,
you know, tea,
or they would offer something else, coffee,
whatever it is.
So generosity is something that they had.
They also,
if they made an oath, they would fulfill
their oaths.
Right? They would not break their oaths.
Right? And they had courage
because you need to be brave in the
desert. Look at that picture of the desert.
That's what you wake up looking at in
the morning.
Okay? You gotta be brave to go out
there. How are you gonna get your food?
There's no metro over there.
How are you gonna get your food?
How are you gonna survive?
So that takes a strong personality
personality,
and to be able to continue the function
etiquettes, they had etiquettes.
So all of these things is what you
learn in the desert.
So prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, learned
all of these from a young age. He's
learning this now. He's going through this training
right from the beginning.
And that's something in our other classes,
that
we encourage families, right, to do. You know,
we're all having a problem in this generation,
all respects to the, what, the Gen z
generation, whatever.
We're having problem with this with this social
media. Right?
Everybody's having problem with it.
So one of the ways to come around
this is to go in the summertime out
into the
out of the city. Go out the city.
Turn off the cell phones.
Come back to nature. At least learn what
nature really is. Right?
So this is what we're all encouraged to
do.
Now while he was there,
when Halima came
and she took the boy,
that time there was a drought.
But she took the boy. And as they
were,
as she took the boy back into the
desert,
things started to happen.
Now part of this is traditions that come
to us, but I'll explain it to you
as what how we're taught.
But what she reported was even the animals,
the donkeys and things animals
were actually,
getting stronger.
And when she got out there, like, they
had had some rain
and things everything changed around them.
And so it was like a it was
like a blessing to have this child,
amongst them.
And
the prophet, peace be upon him, this again,
this is a tradition.
While they were out in the desert, and
this is like a good, like, you know,
4 years or whatever it was. It was
a period of time. But while they were
out in the desert,
the boy was
tending the sheep.
Okay? He was outside around the area where
the sheep were.
And,
an angel came
in the appearance of a man and split
open his chest.
Okay? And something his heart was taken out
according to our traditions, and any evil things,
you know, was taken out of his heart.
But what she reports is she saw what
looked like a man
attacking the boy.
And when she went, she found, you know,
the boy.
He was okay.
And at that point, which he's around 6
years old or so out there
with the flocks,
she said, that's enough for me.
Like, I can't handle this. We later on
found out
that,
it was an angel.
But she she she brings the boy back
to Amina.
K? That's the point I was explaining.
K? So she brings the boy back,
and then Amina goes north,
remember, to and then on her way to
visit the grave of her husband,
she dies.
And the boy is taken over by
the Ethiopian
East African
dry nurse
who becomes his second mother.
That is.
Okay?
It's very important to break down tribalism and
understandings
of who an Arab is. Right? Because in
those days, there's no racial groups like today.
Right? Like, we're all broken into races.
You know, this is how they divide people
up. But in those days,
Arabic was not the color of your skin.
Okay? It was a language, and it was
like a culture
that the people were taking on.
And so
Ayman, an East African woman,
becomes his second mother.
And later on in life, when he became
a prophet and he was in Medina and
and Ummeh was still alive and she came
into the room, into the masjid,
and he saw her, he left the circle,
he stood up
and welcomed her into the Masjid.
Again, you see how the mosque was in
the time of the prophet?
There wasn't a woman's section where you couldn't
even see a woman. Right?
He saw her coming in,
and then he stood up, and he and
he welcomed her, and and and it was
a sister's section.
That's how the original mosque was.
K? And so Ayman,
very important person
in the early life
of prophet Muhammad, peace be upon.
But Abdul Muttalib
Abdul Muttalib,
who remember what who was who had was
taking over as his foster father,
because his father had died. He died at
82 years old.
So the boy was then taken over
by his uncle,
who was his father's brother,
and his name was Abu Talib.
And Abu Talib, like many of the people
of the Quraish, he was a businessman
going north on caravans.
So he would he he went on a
caravan.
Again, this is part of the of of
the politics of Mecca,
The Umayyads, you know, struggling, the different groups
struggling struggling. That's not so important.
Okay?
On the road,
Abu Talib
took
Mohammed, peace be upon him, with him on
a caravan,
and they were on their way to Syria.
And as they were on the road,
a monk
was on a hill
on the side,
and they stopped because there was some
vegetation around
this hill.
And the monk came down to them
and said,
I wanna treat everybody in your caravan. I'm
gonna sacrifice. I have food.
And the monk said,
is everybody here?
And they said, okay. There's a boy, young
young man named Mohammed. He's with the animals.
He's not one of the senior people.
He said, bring him.
This is a Christian monk.
K? Christian monk.
And he said,
bring the boy.
And he and he looked at them, and
he said, you know, he said to the
boy, swear by the gods
about
a particular issue, because the Arabs had the
tendency. They swear by their gods. They have
many different gods. And Mohammed, he would not
swear by the gods.
He didn't do that,
And so that was strange.
And then the monk
then,
looked at him
and said to Abu Talib,
take this boy back to Mecca.
Because if you go to Syria
and the
Jewish tribe, some of them, if they see
him,
because he's not one of them,
He has the signs of prophethood.
You better take him back.
Now Abu Talibinim, they asked Bahira.
That's his name. Georges
was his name, like a Greek name.
You know, they asked him, why how do
you know this?
And he said, I was looking. I'm on
the side of the road.
I had signs of prophethood. You remember? We
discussed it in our previous class. In 325
AD was council of Nicaea.
And this is where the Eastern Roman,
church
was formed. That's where they put the bible
together,
council of Nicaea
in 325 AD.
And they chose the trinity
as the belief of Christianity. Some Christians refused.
Bessly, the Arians
Arias as follows.
They were being killed by the 1,000,
so you find them all over the place.
Bahira
is a remnant
of the ones who refused to accept trinity.
See?
And they had signs
of prophethood.
Everybody knew a prophet was destined to come.
The Jewish people knew.
The Christians, they knew. The ones who believe
the one God, they were all waiting. So
but here that told them, I saw a
cloud
following your caravan,
shading you. You didn't you didn't know this.
And then I tested this boy.
He believes in one god, and he's got
a mark in the back of his back.
It's like a growth
on the back of his back, a birthmark.
This is a prophet,
so you better go back to Mecca.
K? So Abu Talib then
returned,
to Mecca,
and that was one of the signs. And
this is interesting. Again, remember, you must know
who this man is.
You have to know who he is
because people were finding out who he was
even before he became a prophet. This is
before a prophet went.
So the signs were actually there
being showed,
in his life.
K? So these are some of the early,
years,
in the life of prophet Muhammad. Peace and
blessings, people.
So I wanna open up the floor for
any questions, that anybody may have,
concerning
the early years,
of prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Question.
Shay, correct me if I'm wrong, but is
it it's the story of a hero from
a weak chain of the beast, or is
it from a strong?
You know, the the the the Sierra,
you know, stories are not
collected in the same,
like like Hadith.
It's not exactly it's not like a hadith.
So it doesn't go through the same
authentication,
you know, as the hadith.
But,
Ibn Ishaq,
you know, the main seerah scholar had enough
proof,
from the sources to accept the story of
Bahira.
If somebody only follows the Hadith and needs
to have something from the Hadith,
you know, they may say, well, I don't
see it in the Hadith, but there's other
ways that they authenticate
the reports, and,
he's the other day that they authenticated the
report.
K? Any other questions, concerning
the early
days? So this is before prophethood. Right?
So he's not a prophet,
and you need to know who this man
is.
Okay. We found out what are Arabs.
We found out in terms of the tribes
of Quresh.
Right? What was the environment around? Who is
this man?
Okay? So
now he's going out. People are starting to
find out
that there's something happening with this boy who's
now a young man.
Right? And now he's coming into manhood.
This is before
prophethood.
So this would be like his early, like,
twenties. Right?
This is a question.
How did,
the prophet Hussein practice
religion before prophethood? Yeah. So before prophethood,
remember there were people in Mecca called the
Hanif people. Okay. Okay. And and they were
people who believed in 1 God. They were
not idol worshipers.
They were not Christians and Jews. They didn't
have books.
They just prayed in the best way that
they knew to God,
but there was no organized,
way of belief. They just didn't bow down
to idols,
and they try to live a good life.
K? So they later on, you'll see these
people are called Hanif.
These are the Hanif upright, you know, people
who were living in Mecca at the time.
So he would have been one of those,
tech, but there's no organized way to pray
and no revelation.
This is before prophethood.
Okay? Any other, questions anybody else?
Online.
Okay. Russia, they're a bit off topic.
No. If it's off top off topic, especially
political, you know, we're not it's gotta be
on the topic. K? Question here. Why is
it that the, the in Syria would have
killed the prophet
if they didn't Because the issue is now
and you're gonna see later on how it
comes in in his life.
Remember the two sides of the family. Right?
So now they expected
a a messiah or a prophet to come.
They refused to accept Jesus
because they thought they they they said, how
could Mary have a child
without a a husband? Right? She committed adultery.
So they refused to accept Jesus,
and they still expected a messiah
or a prophet to come. Okay? So they
and and you'll see later on that they
saw it was gonna be in the Arabian
Peninsula, but they thought it would come from
the side of Sarah
because so many other great prophets came from
that side.
But now if they see that it comes
from Abraham on the other side,
not all the Jews,
but the extremist amongst them, they wouldn't be
able to handle this.
They they couldn't take it.
So as a protection, that's why Bahira said,
no.
Protect
it online. Yeah.
Many of us who grew up in the
western Judeo Christian backgrounds have been provided with
various
various depictions
of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus
as if they are white European. Yeah. It's
unlikely that these illustrations that those most include
these series are
accurate.
The property of our needs to have
darker features.
Okay.
It it's hard to really depict
how people were in those days,
because things have changed so much.
But the description
if you go back into our sources,
the description of the people of
Iraq, that's Persians and the people from that
side, they describe them as Bennu Ahmad.
They describe them as red people.
Red people.
Okay?
Which means, you know, whatever. That that's Persian
look.
The people who came on the Roman side,
they called them.
So
means yellow or light skin or what we
call today white.
That's the ones Greeks, Romans, that side.
And the Arabs,
they actually call, Benu Asma. The Arabs, they
describe themselves as being brown
and black.
That's the descriptions
that comes through the sources of what is
an Arab and a different people.
So
the people who came from Tigris, Euphrates, if
you look back, you can see they even
had some pictures of Nebuchadnezzar
and, you know, Assyrians. Right? The Assyrian look
of that region there, Persian look,
you know, coming out of that region,
would have been an olive complexion, you know,
person Persian features.
And and the people who are coming from
Greek, you know, area and that side would
be light skinned, you know, white, you know,
type people, you know, today.
And the Jews were Semites.
So the Semitic people
were actually people of,
color.
They were people of color.
And Jesus even described
in what is left of the Bible
as having curly hair
and his he and his skin was like
copper.
That's how it's described in their own literature.
So how do you get this picture of
Jesus? You know, you have in the churches?
They say that Michelangelo
drew his uncle in the Sistine Chapel.
You know, Michelangelo was a famous, artist. Right?
Italian artist.
And he got his uncle
who had brown hair and,
you know, good looking guy with a, you
know, beard and drew a picture of him.
And that's the picture of Jesus that you
have. Right?
But Jesus was not,
and everybody wants to make Jesus, you know,
the religious people look like them.
Okay? So that was a play on words,
but the Semite the a Semitic person at
that time
would not have looked
like a person coming from Northern Europe.
Okay? So this is a mistake.
But we don't we can't ex actually, and
and we don't even like to do a
color thing on profits.
But if you but but but if to
be honest, if you go back into the
sources, you will see it does not look
like the people who,
you know, is presented. That is
a
racist type of,
Eurocentric
way of changing history,
so people have the wrong understanding. They even
said the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids,
you know, they said Cleopatra
and all of them. They made them look
like Mediterranean
people,
but the original Egyptians who built the pyramid
were actually Africans.
Okay? But they won't show you that. They
don't wanna show you that in the films
because that means Africa is not a backward
place,
and it doesn't go along with the theory
of racism.
Okay? Another question?
You were talking about theopians trying
you were talking about the Ethiopians trying to
destroy the Kaaba. I was reading that the
east of.
Yeah.
Will destroy the Kaaba at the end of
Yeah. I mean I mean, this is this
has no relationship with the original Ethiopians, and
it's just something that comes in,
you know, at the end of time, you
know, how things will happen just before the
day of judgement.
So the destruction of the Kaaba
has nothing to do with the original
attack on the Kaaba. It has nothing to
do with it.
K?
So these are the early years of prophet
Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. Floor
is open for now for any general questions
that anybody has. This is a chance for,
general questions.
If anybody has
something left over from last week or anything
that's bothering you,
then we'll try to answer it. The only
thing is this is not a forum for
political questions, right?
But floor is open for any general questions
that anybody has. Yeah. This is really off
topic. No problem. No problem. Are women allowed
to pluck their eyebrows
or wax their eyebrows? Pluck their eyebrows.
Okay.
There are some traditions
that does say that they women should not
pluck their eyebrows and they should not, wear
tattoos. You know the tattoos, right? Should not
do tattoos and things like that.
These are things that they should not do.
And we don't believe in like, you know,
in wigs, in wearing wigs and things like
that.
These are things that, you know, should not
be done.
Doesn't mean you can't trim something or anything
like that.
But in terms of changing, you know, your,
creation, how you were created,
you shouldn't change the creation of Allah. Because
Allah created all of us in a in
a certain way, and we shouldn't be ashamed
of that.
And people have this tendency to
change their creation.
Some people,
think that they are too light, so they
go they put on
suntan lotion because they wanna be brown.
Other people think they're too browns. They put
on whiten and they wanna get, what, light
skin.
Some people think their hair is too straight,
so they put curlers and they make it
curly.
Some people think their hair is too curly,
so they make it straight.
So that that's people who are
ashamed of their creation,
and we are taught that however you're created,
you should not be ashamed of it.
So we take care of ourself, but we
should not be putting on tattoos and doing
things like this.
You can beautify
yourself and whatever, but we don't, you know,
do that. K? You know, the general questions
anybody has? Floor is open. Yeah. So I
have a question regarding,
like, why is it on Friday? Why isn't
Yeah.
Okay.
It's there because that's when it was, you
know, instituted by Allah and his messenger. But
the prophet
did say that,
this is the best day on which Allah
has it is has been created. It's the
day of Jum'ah. It's the best day. Adam
was created on that day.
Also, he left paradise on Jummah,
and the day of judgment will begin on
Jummah.
That's what the prophet said. So it's a
very imp it's a blessed sacred day
to us.
It's a sacred day.
K? Floor is open for any, general questions,
anybody had.
I guess Yeah. Go ahead. Another question. Sure.
No problem.
Can they, if someone wants to pray, can
would their prayer be valid if they pray
it in English, or do they have to
pray it in, like Yeah. Basically, when you're
learning the prayers,
the the the basic prayer should be done,
you know, in,
Arabic.
If the person doesn't memorize
a lot of the Quran itself, there's phrases
like Allahu Akbar
that you can learn right away, Bismillah,
you know, Alhamdulillah.
You know, you you say those things until,
you know, you learn the opening chapter called
the Fatiha in Arabic.
But but but it should if you're making
a dua after the prayer is done,
you can do that in any language.
But inside the prayer,
we will we use Arabic, you
know,
links to
yeah. Any other general questions, anybody has? Floor
is open.
Anything online,
that's coming? General questions?
So this is the new Muslim corner,
and,
you know, if you have questions and, you
know, queries or anything like that, you can,
you know, come to me and, you know,
let us know. And, we will be continuing
on every week. You know, at this time,
you know, from 7 o'clock is when we
actually come. We'll stay a little bit later,
but,
you know, the more you can get closer
to 7,
it is better for us. You know, so
people will have a chance to, if they
want to go home before dark,
they can go home before the before the
darkness comes. You know, there if they want
to stay in the Masjid, there's a lot
of activities around.
People can stay.
Okay?
So,
for those online, have a safe journey home.
And inshallah, we'll see you next week. Wassalaamu
alaykum, Barahmatullah.